You'll drive hours across the Nullarbor before the highway bends south and delivers you to this crescent of white sand where the outback finally exhales into the sea. Streaky Bay sits in splendid isolation on South Australia's far west coast—not Western Australia, but close enough to feel the vastness of the continent pressing at your back. The town itself is a working fishing port, humble and unhurried, where trawlers unload King George whiting and the jetty stretches long and weathered into water so clear you can count the leather jackets swimming below.
“One of the few places where the stark red geology of the Nullarbor directly meets swimmable turquoise bays.”
Credit: FlickrPoint Labatt on Eyre Peninsula. The dramatic cliffs. At their base is an Australian sea lion colony. Accessible from Streaky Bay.
The beach curves in a gentle arc, protected enough for children to wade while their parents scan the horizon for southern right whales during winter months. Granite headlands frame each end, their rust-colored stone glowing amber in late afternoon light. Gulls wheel and cry, but otherwise the soundtrack is minimal: wind through coastal teatree, the rhythmic shush of small swells, your own footsteps on sand that squeaks underfoot.
Come prepared—this is not a place of beach clubs or umbrella rentals. Pack your esky with ice and locally caught prawns, claim a patch of shade beneath the Norfolk pines that line the foreshore, and settle into the kind of slow, unstructured day that makes you forget what day it is. The remoteness is the point.
